For the process in this guide to be effective, facilitators will have to:​

  • Create trust within the decision group
  • Clarify and interrogate the facts in context within the group
  • Build a shared understanding of what matters to different individuals, and a shared commitment to what should matter most
  • Explain each step the team goes through so participants understand what they’re doing and why.

 


 

Group facilitation is an area of work that comes with its own skill set, knowledge base, and character traits. In addition to these, for a facilitator to be successful in this process for system-level decision-making, she will need to be skilled at:

  • Demonstrating and helping others demonstrate respect
  • Asking good questions
  • Reframing responses
  • Distinguishing between facts, values and emotions
  • Acknowledging participants’ emotions and their perspectives about facts and values and helping to collectively work through these

Those working in organizations, particularly large organizations, cannot live with integrity without institutional support. This support includes access to education and support for thinking about ethics. It also includes providing forums where conversations about difference can occur and where genuine listening and understanding can occur.

It can be very helpful for team leaders to create space for the team to think through some important questions about what is important about how the team works together and the actual decisions the team makes.

The resource Leading with Integrity contains a number of questions that individual members of a team and the team as a group should consider to live with integrity.

Who is it for: All leaders of teams in an organization.

What it does: The brochure provides an overview of important ideas and questions that teams should grapple with in order to help the team and individuals live with greater integrity.

How to use it: Review the tool, share it with your team members and then create space to discuss the questions posed. Work together to develop a strategy for how to follow through on the various commitments suggested.

Who is it for: Everyone.

What it does: Creates an opportunity for self-reflection on how you are feeling, what you want in life that you can control and how you  might act to help bring this about.

How to use it: Share this document with members of your team(s) and invite them to spend 15 minutes looking through the slides and pausing to answer the four journaling questions included.

Who is it for: Everyone

What it does: Provides a series of steps for systematically thinking through a particular issue paying attention to evidence, values and partnerships. Most useful when you have 45 minutes or more, but the basic process can be used in whatever amount of time is available.

How to use it: Bring out the tool the next time you or your team are working through a challenging situation and walk through the steps to help develop your response.